Typically, as used in pneumatically powered or combustion-powered nail-driving tools, wire nails having D-shaped or other heads that are not fully circular are collated by adhesively applied tapes or other collating media to form a strip. The shanks of the collated nails are oriented in closely spaced, parallel relation to one another and, except at one end of the strip, the head of one nail overlies the head of another nail.
For reasons of performance and aesthetics, it would be highly desireable to use wire nails having radially offset, fully circular heads in such a strip. It has proved to be very difficult to develop an efficient, commercially practicable way to make such nails, particularly in large production runs.
Wire nails having radially offset, fully circular heads, collated in a strip, are disclosed in O'Connor U.S. Pat. No. 3,358,822. The O'Connor patent does not disclose how to make such nails.
Wire nails having radially offset, fully circular heads, collated in a strip, and an apparatus for making such nails are disclosed in a copending application assigned commonly herewith, U.S. Ser. No. 07/597,025 filed Oct. 15, 1990, by Henry A. Sygnator for WIRE NAIL, STRIP OF COLLATED WIRE NAILS, AND RELATED APPARATUS. The apparatus disclosed therein must be precisely adjusted and may not be entirely satisfactory for making such nails in large production runs wherein precise adjustments of such an apparatus may be difficult to maintain.
This invention has resulted from further efforts to develop an efficient, commercially practicable way to make wire nails having radially offset, fully circular heads in large production runs.